Does the Pope fuck in the woods?

If like me you enjoy the process of buying a book more than the process of reading past the first chapter, you probably crave a much lighter method of obtaining knowledge. There’s Wikipedia, but that’s as reliable as…Wikipedia, and offers so many tangents that you’ll start reading about the Spanish civil war and end up reading about whatever happened to Matt Dillon or some other wayward subject. No, Wikipedia will not do, what we need is a box that just tells you stuff, wait a minute, that’s a TV! Yes, television should be a pixelated fountain of knowledge, but more often than not it’s Come Fucking Dine With Me.

If I want to watch something about history I usually have to either watch Tony Robinson dig for shit or Horrible Histories, a children’s show which could irritate Joe Pasquale. I’m sure kids might love it, but it’s not aimed for a cool and hip 20-something like myself, in fact not many history shows are. The few documentaries that do appear on TV are mostly presented by ageing professors who could make sex seem boring. I’ve always thought David Starkey was a bit of a dick and this week he proved that, what we need is a cool and hip 20-something to present a history documentary…Joe Swash?

This poor selection of history programmes has perhaps led me to watching historical dramas such as The Tudors and Camelot (it’s kind of historical). This week saw the start of The Borgias, which if it wasn’t clear by the title is all about the Borgias, you know, they’re kind of like the renaissance Italian Osbournes. Rodrigo Borgia, played by Jeremy Irons (just so you know he’s evil) becomes pope resulting in hilarious consequences.

Other than the setting it’s not much different to other historical dramas, it took a mere three minutes (including opening titles) for the first glimpse of gratuitous sex and nine minutes for needless swashbuckling. Every actor does their best Orlando Bloom thespian impression and it’d be near impossible to tell the difference from The Tudors if it weren’t for all the silly hats.

Much like The Tudors the show is filled with sex, corruption, and murder, though The Borgias isn’t as half as sexy. Most of the cast are cardinals, old men in silly hats, how the pope managed to bag so many mistresses dressed like that is a mystery. It’s peculiar that gratuitous sex is a cliché of historical drama, was it the only thing that went on back in those days or do the writers think it’s the only way to get us interested? If these shows were about when I was fourteen I’d be a professor by now.

That is if they’re historically accurate. The Tudors took creative licence and pissed all over history, I don’t know much about the Borgias so it’s difficult to tell what’s fact or fiction. Maybe Machiavelli will come in mid-series and fuck everyone. Then again, that might have actually happened, you can see the trouble I’m having here. It’s inevitable that the writers will take liberties but I’ll be too ignorant to know when, it would be useful if there was a trivia track to tell us what was true and what was made up.

I was a little less ignorant about the Borgias than I thought I was, and why? Because I played Assassin’s Creed II. I assumed that game was all lies but some of it is actually pretty accurate, or at least it has many of the same lies as The Borgias does. Maybe if The Borgias was told from the viewpoint of an assassin it might be more exciting, instead we’re left with cardinals and a weird ginger man who loves a bit of flagellation.  

It might not be clear what I’m learning from this show apart from that chicks love a guy in a mitre, but as long as it’s entertaining, that’s all that matters. The problem is though, that so far it’s pretty damn boring. The sex isn’t sexy enough, the corruption isn’t corrupt enough, and the murders aren’t murdery(?) enough. Maybe it’ll pick up in a few episodes, but one thing’s for certain, they all die in the end.

Swagger

A blogger living on the outskirts of London should be shitting themselves over the weekend’s events. I however lack any kind of political savvy. That’s not to say I’m an idiot, but I cannot  honestly write a piece about the Tottenham riots without parading my ignorance all over the interweb. It’s easy to say “it’s a fucking disgrace!” and “something should be done about it!”, it’s easy to make bad jokes, but what isn’t easy is to write something factually sound which provides a new opinion, and one you can take seriously. I’m not a journalist, I’m a dickhead, and as such I won’t be having any ideas above my station.

Somewhere down my level and grinding my gears is the current state of music. As we all know, music is subjective and as such is very difficult to evaluate, whether it’s praise or criticism. The same is true for any form of art, but people seem to get a little more obstreperous when it comes to music. Saying you don’t like my favourite film is to an extent understandable, but if you diss my favourite band I’ll go ape shit, and so will you if I diss yours. Why are they good? It’s hard to analyse music and defend it, other than the statement “it’s good” there aren’t many other punches you can throw. If your “it’s good” is countered with a “it’s shit” it comes down to a majority opinion, and if there are more shits than there are goods then sadly you’re wrong, and your favourite band is shit. I’ll brazenly declare Coldplay and N-Dubz as excrement but how can I prove it? This cannot be done by one man alone, and in a world where half the population are below the average I.Q it’s impossible. I’m not saying that stupid people like N-Dubz, but if they knew better they wouldn’t.

So we can’t prove that music is good or bad, and in that sense it’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat. Maybe we should put Dappy in a sealed box with a vial of poison. Why? Because he’s a cunt. That we can prove. Worryingly, we can’t prove that Cher Lloyd’s Swagger Jagger - which made it to number one yesterday - is a pile of shite. It’s my opinion that it’s the biggest piece of wank ever to be recorded, it offers nothing to the world, it’s an insult to everyone living, everyone that has lived, everyone who has yet to live, to animals, to plants, to atoms, to electrons, to neutrinos, it is offensive to everything, it’s a fucking disgrace and something should be done about it! I can’t prove it's shit though. Objectively it’s not and this is frustrating. If anything its success suggests that it is in fact good.

It’s likely that mostly kids bought the single, but it’s out there now, it’s on TV, it’s on the radio, and it’ll become increasingly difficult to avoid and the mere knowledge that it’s out there is enough to piss me off. There’ll even be a few adults who bought it. We don’t trust kids with a vote so why do these cunts get one as well?

Knowing that the song is pure terrible, why has it made it to number one? It sounds like a bad Alesha Dixon b-side (and they must all be bad) but she’s never got a number one, there must be another reason. Cher Lloyd was of course an X-Factor contestant, and being on TV for several weeks appears to be the X-Factor. It’s nothing to do with talent or image, it’s all about exposure, and the X-Factor is the perfect vehicle to sell an artist to kids and idiots. Mr Blobby, the Teletubbies, and Bob the Builder have all been massively popular TV characters who have had number ones, and Cher Lloyd is no different to them. She’s the same gimmick only sold to a slightly older demographic. I can’t objectively prove that Cher Lloyd is shit, but I can compare her to Mr cunting Blobby. I’ll take that.

Trend of the World

Twitter has steadily become part of my life. Pre-Twitter I used to look at my phone to see how many text messages I didn’t have. These days Twitter gives me something to look at other than bitter disappointment. The majority of what I read might not be interesting, some of it might even offend me, but it always distracts me, Twitter passes the time, and because of that it’s an essential part of my life.

It’s more than something to look at when you’re waiting for someone to come back from the toilet though, it’s a fantastic resource for news and entertainment, as well as a great way to socialise with friends and even people you’ve never met. For someone like me who texts absolute shit without expecting a reply, Twitter is perfect, I don’t have to abuse an individual with my inane tomfoolery, I can share the shit with my followers. Not that many of them are real though.

Essentially Twitter is just a conduit to show the world how witty, funny, and caring you are, or more likely, how much of a dick you are. While I may think I’ve just tweeted the funniest tweet in the history of tweeting, only four people will read it and think “what a prick”. If they do like it then they might retweet it and for ten minutes I will feel like a king. The entire retweeting culture can be quite depressing at times though. If the link to one of these blog posts is retweeted then I know I’ve done a good job, though if it’s not then it’s the end of the fucking world! If no one retweets the link it must be shit! Twitter is messing with my emotions, making me feel good about myself and then taking it all away from me and kicking me face first into the dirt. You better fucking retweet this.

Twitter is a good thing then? Sort of. There are many good things about Twitter but if like me you find yourself looking at trending topics you might get very annoyed. Currently these are the topics trending on twitter:

#BornElectric
#1datmtv
#undateable
#arentyoutiredof
Dear Santa
Duncan Bannatyne
Mike Ashley
Joey Barton
Goodwillie
#iwantacopyofsavage

Trending topics might be a good idea in principal, but by the time a subject trends it holds no relevance. If you were to click on Dear Santa you could read every tweet which includes that phrase, but most of them will be “Why Dear Santa be trending? Huh? LOLZ”. What are we supposed to do with this information? Every single time a film is on TV, thousands will declare that they are watching it, it trends, and then thousands more tweet “Minority Report is trending! I love that film!”. Then you get the spambots, who mention every topic and a suspicious looking link.

This is irksome to say the least but what’s genuinely terrifying about Twitter is the ever increasing cult of One Direction fans. #1datmtv may look like gibberish but I’ve come to understand the language of one-speak, and it means One Direction at MTV. The most talked about topic in the UK is that a boy band who haven’t even released a single were on MTV. What the fuck is wrong with this country? It’s not just today, they’re constantly trending because their fans do nothing but tweet about them. Soon this evil cult will have more influence and power than the Royal family, they’ll be more of a threat to western civilization than Al-Qaeda. Imagine the pandemonium when One Direction do release a single, Twitter is going to crash, so will the stock markets, and every plane in the sky. The Mayans were right, the world is going to end in 2012 and it’ll all be the fault of this cult of fucking morons. Fucking morons devoting their lives (and sacrificing yours!) to cunts with smiley faces and an average amount of talent. THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!

I think I’m just going to stop looking at the trending topics and get on with my life.

Saving Captain America

I was only a kid when I saw the motion picture Captain America. My memory is hazy but there was a guy dressed in a blue suit who had a shield. That’s all I remember about 1990’s incarnation of the Cap but I doubt many people are even aware of the film’s existence. After all, it currently holds a rating of 2.9 on IMDB. Just to compare, The Phantom (you know, it had Billy Zane literally dressed as a bellend in it) has a rating of 4.9. Praise the lord for my hazy memory!

In 2000, X-Men kick started a golden age of comic book movies, and by golden age I mean a relentless barrage of the fuckers. We were given films like Elektra, Ghostrider, and The Spirit, hardly the most recognisable of heroes. Yet Captain America, one of the biggest Marvel heroes, had escaped another adaptation until this week. Why the long wait? Did they think that we didn’t need another Captain America and that the 2.9 pile of shite would fulfil us for eternity? That’s unfair, I can’t honestly judge that film with the limited memory I have, it might be a masterpiece. There were over 20 Marvel films between X-Men and Captain America: The First Avenger, did they forget about him? Or was it political? After all, it’s Captain AMERICA. You might as well call him Captain Prick outside the States.

Captain America: The First Avenger follows Thor as the second big Marvel film of the year, and manages to up the ante considerably. While Thor was a strange mix of Norse fantasy and California Man (Encino Man for the Americans), Captain America is a straight up WWII adventure romp. Directed by Joe Johnston of The Rocketeer fame, you would be forgiven for lowering your expectations, but Johnston has managed to make a film which should not only beat an IMDB score of 2.9, but also 4.9, making it officially better than The Phantom. Score!

Since Iron Man in 2008, there has been a steady string of films leading up to next year’s avengings, though what sets Captain America apart from the likes of Iron Man 2 and Thor is that for the most part, it completely forgets it’s an Avengers prequel. Set in WWII it’s free of restraints and can focus on being an actual film, Agent Coulson can’t appear every twenty minutes, and nor can a one eyed Samuel L. Jackson.

Steve Rodger’s journey to becoming Captain America is perfectly paced, and akin to the sort of heart warming overcoming the odds film Disney might make. We see Chris Evans’ puny Rodgers get beaten up and rejected from the army, and by the time he makes the transition to super-soldier it feels like the end of one of those Disney films, and in a good way. This is a man who has been bullied all his life, and he is finally able to defend himself. In this sense, Captain America is far more human than any other Avenger, and despite being a piece of American propaganda, we can relate to the guy standing up to bullies.

We’ve not just come for the sentiments though, we’ve come to see Captain America kick some Nazi ass! And he doesn’t just kick them, he kills them! I guess I’ve got so used to super heroes just slapping their enemies about a bit that seeing Cap shoot his is quite surprising. He just don’t give a fuck. It is WWII after all. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan however, Johnston directs the action in the style of a Sunday matinee adventure reminiscent of something like Indiana Jones (and even Star Wars), yet there are only so many ways you can see the Captain attacking a Nazi with a shield.

The action isn’t bad, it’s just not good as everything else, especially the acting, which for a comic book film is rather good indeed. Chris Evans has already proved he can handle action roles in Fantastic Four, Push, and The Losers and he is perfect in the role of Steve Rodgers. British actors Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, and Hayley Atwell do an impressive job and while he’s not on screen for very long, Stanley Tucci shows why he makes everything better.

Who would have thought that the director of The Rocketeer could come up with something this good? Not me, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much, because I expected The Rocketeer. This should get us all excited for The Avengers but I still can’t see how it’s going to work. There are so many loose ends from four different films that it has to be at least five hours long just to tie them all together. It’s either going to be a horrible mess, or there’s going to be a horrible mess in every nerd’s pants. I’ll let you know next May if I come or not.